WHO summarized presentations made at the 4th Global Immunization Meeting, held in New York, 17-19 February 2009, focused on funding shortfalls in WHO’s current annual budget for immunization. The budget is about US$140 million, and main contributors to the 2008-09 budget include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the GAVI Alliance; the governments and aid agencies of Canada and the United States of America; Johns Hopkins University; the Measles Partnership; PATH; and UNICEF.

During recent years, direct financial support for WHO’s immunization work has decreased, with “increasing specificity of funds.” The projected budget required for 2010-11 is US$210 million. Of this amount, there is a funding gap of US$109 million, or 52%. Since 2002, on average only 80% of WHO’s immunization budget has been met each year. This has “led to challenges in fulfilling core functions in the area of immunization.”

In 2007-2008, “various critical activities were not implemented due to the persistence of funding gaps. Updated recommendations for the production, control and evaluation of a number of existing vaccines could not be developed, resulting in a subsequent delay in their prequalification and a potential shortage in their availability. Funding gaps also impacted the evaluation of pneumococcal vaccines as well as the provision of technical support to countries, particularly in the WHO African Region.”

The structure of WHO’s immunization budget “has become such that today donors providing direct support are committed, but few in number, with the funds that they provide highly specified, leaving little flexibility. These factors do not allow WHO to allocate resources for immunization optimally and are impacting upon WHO’s ability to deliver on its global immunization mandate. Increased direct, flexible funding from a greater number of donors would improve WHO’s ability to deliver on core immunization functions.”

http://www.who.int/immunization/funding/en/index.html

Presentations

Global immunization efforts. Successes, gaps and challenges [pdf 3.30Mb]
Update of GIVS Financing and Current Gaps/Needs since 2005 [pdf 954kb]